


Punch?

by her_eyes_looked_sharp_and_steady



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC Extended Universe, DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Kind of AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-16 22:32:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14174769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/her_eyes_looked_sharp_and_steady/pseuds/her_eyes_looked_sharp_and_steady
Summary: Basically, Sara and Ava meet accidentally in a sorta-AU universe and immediately kinda hate each other but Laurel and Tommy are getting married and Sara really needs a date. Take a wild guess where this is going :)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This has almost nothing to do with DCEU canon and blatantly ignores the fact that by the laws of the Arrowverse both Laurel and Tommy are dead. Do I care? Absolutely not, because otherwise how would I situate this disaster gay/bi pile of fluff. You’ve been warned.

At some point, the Legends trying to set her up on blind dates becomes more irritating than funny. That point was reached three weeks ago, when they somehow managed to leave her in 2008 for the night with a straight girl who was looking for someone to spice up her relationship with her white-bread boyfriend. _Ugh_.

Sara swears to whatever deity is up there that it’s the last time she ever leaves them alone with the ship and half considers asking Gideon to put the Waverider on lockdown until further notice. They all think it’s funny now, but wait until Mick runs out of beer, Ray gets distracted by yet another project, and Zari can’t fuck with the processors anymore. The Waverider might not survive the experience, but it would certainly drive home the point.

 

It’s been a couple of days since their last attempt, and the ship is a little too quiet for Sara not to think they’re about to spring something on her. She slips out of her quarters and towards the jump ship, quietly instructing Gideon not to tell her crew anything and that Amaya is acting captain, though they are not to be informed of that unless absolutely necessary. That she makes it to the jump ship without anyone seeing her only adds to her sense of trepidation. Living in close quarters with so many people means that, by all rights, she should’ve seen _someone_.

She’s careful not to mess with the timeline, knowing the implications, but she sets a course for Star City 2017. Sara knows she left in what would’ve been 2016, but she doesn’t want to have missed too much. It was bad enough that she’s still only barely used to calling it Star City. How do people just rename entire cities??

 

The skyline is familiar and grounding, and Sara pilots the jump ship to an empty lot she knows hasn’t been touched in years. That much hasn’t changed.

Neither, apparently, has the gym she usually works out at whenever she’s in the present day. The same stench of sweaty mats, sound of leather hitting skin, sight of bad tattoos and a toned blonde beating the shit out of a heavy bag…

Well, _that’s_ new _._

 

The regulars all know her well enough to toss a few yelled greetings her way as she makes her way into the back to tape her hands. Sara sneaks a peek at the woman, noting her form and the way her focus never tapers off even as the sounds of the gym change around her. And yeah, maybe she takes a bit too long “noting her form.” It isn’t every day that she comes across women who could potentially kick her ass, much less ones with abs that rival her own. Regretfully, she tears her gaze away, just in time to catch the roll of tape coming right at her face courtesy of Diggle, her usual training partner. She just smirks when he waggles his eyebrows in the woman’s direction.

“You ready, _John_?” she tosses back, already feeling the adrenaline shoot through her veins in anticipation of a hard workout. Everyone else at the gym is mostly used to them trying to pulverize the other, but she’s a little curious to see if it’s enough to break the blonde’s concentration.

 

Sara’s strategy relies mostly on her athletic ability, and her willingness to fight unconventionally. Diggle is more of a bruiser, used to boxing guys about his size, so it’s a challenge for them both. When they really get into it, it’s enough to draw a bit of a crowd. That, or the fact that Sara usually ditches her tank top about an hour in and fights in a sports bra and training tights.

Men are so easily distracted.

They take it relatively easy, only going a few rounds of truly fighting before relaxing into comfortable sparring. By the time Sara wipes the sweat from her forehead with the bottom hem of her tank top, the blonde is gone, and Sara dimly registers a twinge of disappointment. She’s only in town for the night, so it shouldn’t matter really, but Sara has a feeling it would’ve been a fun one.

 

Dinner with Laurel is the same as ever, and that’s probably why she finds it comforting. Laurel is still engaged to Tommy, still works in the DA’s office, still has the same apartment, still asks the same questions, and still gently (or not) pries into her love life. It’s what older sisters are for, Sara thinks. The contrast to her own life is staggering, where she literally travels time and tries to fix anachronisms caused by her future self (it hurts her head to think about sometimes). She hugs Laurel tighter than usual before she leaves, not knowing the next time she’ll be back, and prays her crew hasn’t totally wrecked either the ship or the timeline since she last checked on them.

 

They didn’t do either of those things, per se. What they did do was… huh.

There are feathers? And… fire remnants? _Duh_. Rory.

Sara decides she doesn’t even want to know and heads off to bed, figuring she’ll deal with it in the morning, whatever **it** is.

 

 

Before Sara realizes it, it becomes a habit. Her crew are off plotting something, and she ends up in Star City working out with Diggle. Sometimes she times it perfectly and she’s finishing up, sweaty abs on full display, just as the tall blonde walks in and starts her warmup. Those are the days Sara swears she can see a light flush spreading down onto the woman’s neck, and she makes sure to purposefully brush by her with a sly wink on her way out. Inevitably, one of her punches just barely misses the mark, and Sara revels in being the cause. Diggle sees it all and can’t help but laugh- this woman has Sara Lance wrapped around her little finger, and neither of them have any idea it’s happening.

 

She thinks she’s being subtle. Not towards the woman; she has no intention of doing that. Rather, Sara thinks she’s done a pretty good job hiding her evening activities from the rest of the Legends.

It comes as a surprise one night when she comes back and finds them all sitting at the kitchen table seemingly waiting for something. _Shit_.

 

“So,” Ray starts, where’d you go?”

“Star City. It’d been a while since I saw Laurel,” Sara replies carefully, not entirely sure where the conversation is headed.

Amaya steps up. Traitor. “So, you didn’t see her yesterday? Since, you know, you’ve gone out every night this week,” Amaya says, instantly making Sara regret her decision to make her acting captain.

“Are you… keeping tabs on me?” Sara asks incredulously, raising an eyebrow that has both Nate and Ray quaking in fear.

“Not exactly?” Nate pipes up, instantly regretting his decision once Sara turns the full force of her glare on him.

She nods once, then turns to go, effectively signaling the end of the conversation. It doesn’t escape her attention, however, that as soon as she leaves the room, they start whispering conspiratorially across the table.

 

She doesn’t go back for almost two weeks, as if to prove a point.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick little update while I figure out the nuances of how I want this to go

 

Sara is irritable, to put it nicely.

Without a dedicated outlet for her frustrations, Nate cries twice a day, Mick drinks even more, and Zari is the only one brave enough to approach her directly. Even Gideon has started avoiding her a little, but that probably has more to do with Sara’s threat to turn the AI off in a particularly tense moment than anything else.

On a more positive note, her crew avoiding her means no more shitty blind dates.

Rather than waste another night stalking around the ship, Sara figures she deserves a break. She heads off to the jump ship and plugs in the coordinates for Star City 2017 before she really even realizes what she’s doing.

If she happens to run into _someone_ while she’s there, it wouldn’t hurt her any.

 

She shows up the gym without a real plan. Diggle’s busy, because Oliver was being all dark and broody and got himself injured enough to incur Felicity’s wrath. Typical. Honestly, she can be impressively scary for a small blonde computer nerd.

A couple hours on the heavy bag and some space from the Waverider should be enough to take the edge off, but having a partner is always more fun. If her mental clock is correct, she just might have one after all.

_Bingo_.

At precisely 8:30, the tall blonde Sara spent her last few gym visits ~~drooling over~~   ~~flirting with~~ ~~trying to impress~~ _observing_ comes through the door and promptly begins to wrap her hands. If being a time-traveling superhero has taught Sara anything, it’s a good sense of timing. And how to flirt with women in any era.

 

“Hey,” Sara says, half-smirking in a way that usually gets her what she wants, “what’re you doing tonight?”

The blonde stiffens and stops rummaging through the open duffle bag in front of her. “I hardly think that’s an appropriate question.”

Sara has to hold back a snort at the way the other woman’s mouth presses into a hard line, settling for raising an eyebrow.

“My usual training partner is out for the night and you seem like you can hold your own,” she drawls, steadily holding the taller woman’s gaze. “I’m Sara.”

“Ava Sharpe, FBI,” she snaps. “Of course I can. Besides, that boxing disaster you normally try to pass off as training leaves you vulnerable to equally matched opponents.”

 _There it is._ “Not that you’ve been watching me fight or anything,” Sara taunts, throwing in a cheeky wink for good measure as Ava flushes at the implications of what she just admitted.

“You said you wanted to fight?”

 

It’s the best gym session she’s had in a long time. Not that she would ever _really_ complain, but most of the Legends’ missions don’t involve highly trained assassins (or government employees), and it doesn’t take much work to dispatch them. Sara and Ava are pretty equally matched; Ava has a longer reach, but Sara is more athletic.

The intensity of the fight is probably not helped by Sara running her mouth the entire time. It’s chirping for chirping’s sake, but it’s no less effective. By the end, Ava looks like she genuinely wants to throttle her, much to Sara’s delight. She’s pretty sure the only reason it didn’t happen was the brief moment she (purposely) flashed Ava her abs wiping off her face. Not that Ava really seemed like the husband kind, but now Sara’s fairly confident her efforts aren’t going to waste.

It isn’t a stretch to say that Sara could hook up with whoever she wanted in the gym, no problem. If Ava wasn’t such a pain in the ass, Sara already would’ve gotten bored and moved on, despite her objective attractiveness. But this… this is something else. This is fun. And when Laurel fusses over the mark on her cheekbone where Ava “missed” a punch over Skype the next morning, Sara just rolls her eyes and smirks when she thinks Laurel isn’t looking. It was a solid right hook- Ava certainly didn’t miss much of her face.

Life wouldn’t be as rewarding without a challenge now and then.

 

 

A challenge is all it is, and a Legend has never backed away from an ill-advised situation, much to their supervisor’s chagrin.

Sara stops telling Diggle when she’ll be in Star City altogether, preferring to ~~flirt~~ work out with Ava. Ava, who tells her on no uncertain terms to call her Agent Sharpe. There’s just nothing like watching the muscle just above her (admittedly quite defined) jawline tick with frustration.

She visits the lair under Verdant often enough that no one grows suspicious of her sudden “absence”, and she almost always makes time for Laurel, so the only real obstacles to quality time with Ava are the Legends.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short-ish update. It's about to get going though, so hopefully the next one will be a bit longer. As always, please ignore my dubious editing skills.

Zari, Sara is convinced, is a pain in the ass for absolutely no reason. If she wasn’t almost always in the way of Sara trying to fuck with Ava, it would almost be admirable how quickly the Legends corrupted her.

Within the span of a week, Zari has somehow corrupted Gideon; put a ship-wide alert out for the departure of the jump ship; done her best to schedule repairs and upkeep for the exact time frame Ava will be at the gym; and gotten half the Legends involved in her shenanigans. It’s incredibly irritating and Sara doesn’t even have access to her favorite outlet.

 

The next time Sara can distract her team long enough to successfully slip away is almost two full weeks after the last time she saw Ava.

It’s almost embarrassing how quickly the sight of a tight blonde bun and Sara’s favorite scowl striding through the gym doors can brighten her day.

_Shit. Nope. Absolutely not. It’s the potential to be an asshole that’s making things seem a little less shitty. The fact that her preferred outlet is Ava is just a coincidence._

 

“Hey, Ava! How was your day?” Sara asks, sporting a grin that can only be described as obnoxious.

“Go warm up so we can get this over with,” Ava snarks back with an eye roll. “I come here to work out, not be distracted by whatever it is you’re trying to pull.”

“Oh, so you admit I’m distracting?” Sara raises an eyebrow. “Good to know. My abs are pretty spectacular.”

Ava chokes.

 

One day, she’s really going to get herself in trouble. But for now, it’s just too much fun to leave Ava sputtering in her wake.

She leaves the gym that day sporting a fresh bruise on the side of her ribs from a wicked elbow, but she caught the way Ava’s eyes locked onto the ridge of her hip when Sara sent a flying roundhouse kick in Ava’s general direction. Not to actually injure her or anything. Maybe just to prove that she could. Maybe.

Fuck.

 

Sara’s in trouble.

Laurel’s wedding is in a month and Sara still has yet to find a date. Being a time-traveling superhero isn’t exactly conducive towards establishing a normal social life. Neither is the fact that most free nights are spent in a ratty gym in Star City fighting an FBI agent until they’re both too exhausted to continue. She’ll probably end up dragging Amaya just for the sake of having someone to talk to, but Laurel probably expects a _date_ date.

Later that night, it gets definitively worse. For the first time, Ava outright wins one of their physical skirmishes, and Sara isn’t even upset about it. They were nearing a draw, as their fights usually turn out, when Ava managed to half-trip them into a move that pinned Sara against the mat with her bodyweight. If anyone asks, Sara only got distracted because that’s not how her horizontal activities usually go.

It definitely wasn’t because one of the literal most attractive women Sara’s ever seen was hovering over her, holding down her hips and looking unfairly pretty for someone who’d been fighting at her peak abilities for over an hour.

_When did she start feeling like **that** about Ava???_

_Wait._

_Duh._

 

It was a rhetorical question, but Sara finds herself delving further into it once she’s safely back in the captain’s quarters of the Waverider. Obviously, Ava is ridiculously attractive, which is how Sara found herself in her current position to begin with. What’s concerning is that she doesn’t really know when Ava stopped being just someone to annoy, and that’s the terrifying part. It’s clear that Ava mostly sees her as a nuisance (due to her own actions), but Ava’s presence in Sara’s life has been cementing itself for a while.

She thinks it was when she started knowing Ava’s gym schedule better than her own, or that on Thursday nights Ava prefers quiet to their usual banter. Maybe it was when Sara accidentally memorized the way Ava wrapped her hands, and was always ready with a roll of tape for when Ava walked in.

Maybe it was when she learned that Ava was in the Army before she started working for the FBI, which explained both her martial arts capabilities and her intolerance for Sara’s flippancy. Maybe it was when Ava walked in one night, lost, because one of the agents under her command had gotten hurt in the field and Ava felt personally responsible.

Maybe it was all of those things, wrapped up into 5’9” of stick-up-the-ass sternness, with a neat regulation bun and a severe frown to cover up the way she cares so much.

 

Maybe it’s the fact that she knows there’s no chance of Ava feeling the same way, regardless of any attraction that exists between them.

 

Yeah, she’ll just take Amaya to Laurel’s wedding.


End file.
